Solve pressing science, technological, and policy problems and make innovation happen. Apply your expertise, stretch your creative boundaries, and win cash awards ranging from $5,000 to $1 million — all the while helping advance human progress and making the world a better place...

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) seeks methods to accurately forecast the spread of chikungunya virus in the Caribbean, and North, Central, and South America.

This Challenge has a special award structure with awards of $150,000 and $100,000 for the top two overall Solvers and four honorable mention awards of $50,000 each. In addition, top Solvers in each Methodology Category (data, robustness, applicability, presentation, and computation) may win $10,000. The top six overall Solvers will be invited to DARPA for the Program Finale Meeting where they will participate in an interactive meeting to share best practices, collaborate, and facilitate continuing Solver community cohesion.

This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and multiple submissions of forecasts for the virus’ spread. Additionally, as a Prodigy Challenge an online leaderboard will be available to track Solver performance.

Privacy Advisory

This web site is hosted by a private entity and is not a service of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the Department of Defense (DoD). The solicitation and collection of your personal or individually identifiable information is subject to the host’s privacy and security policies and will not be shared with DARPA or the DoD unless you win the Challenge. Challenge winners’ personally identifiable information must be made available to DARPA in order to collect an award. Please consult the Challenge Specific Agreement.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) seeks methods to accurately forecast the spread of chikungunya virus in the Caribbean, and North, Central, and South America.

This Challenge has a special award structure with awards of $150,000 and $100,000 for the top two overall Solvers and four honorable mention awards of $50,000 each. In addition, top Solvers in each Methodology Category (data, robustness, applicability, presentation, and computation) may win $10,000. The top six overall Solvers will be invited to DARPA for the Program Finale Meeting where they will participate in an interactive meeting to share best practices, collaborate, and facilitate continuing Solver community cohesion.

This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and multiple submissions of forecasts for the virus’ spread. Additionally, as a Prodigy Challenge an online leaderboard will be available to track Solver performance.

Privacy Advisory

This web site is hosted by a private entity and is not a service of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the Department of Defense (DoD). The solicitation and collection of your personal or individually identifiable information is subject to the host’s privacy and security policies and will not be shared with DARPA or the DoD unless you win the Challenge. Challenge winners’ personally identifiable information must be made available to DARPA in order to collect an award. Please consult the Challenge Specific Agreement.

The more you experience, the more you enjoy life. Health issues can arise, but you should still be free to squeeze all the joy, excitement, and wonder out of life you can. Whole You™ products and solutions are made to enhance how you experience life. We push the boundaries of senses and mobility, helping you to see more, hear more, taste more, feel more, do more–unlocking new and exciting possibilities for your health and well-being.

Whole You™–our goal is to help you live life to the fullest.

Sleep Matters

With a good night’s sleep, anything is possible. Everyone instinctively understands the benefits of sleep. It allows us to think more clearly. See opportunity all around us. Perform at our very best. Almost all of us have had a first-hand experience with the sluggish, irritable feeling that follows a night without enough sleep. This feeling, however, is more than occasional for people with sleep apnea, a disorder that prevents a restful night’s sleep. People with sleep apnea stop breathing while asleep. As a result, they awaken repeatedly and never gain the restorative benefits of undisturbed sleep. Sleep apnea is potentially dangerous if left untreated since it can lead to serious health issues, as well as risks inherent in performing daily activities while exhausted.

Changing Sleep for the Better

Fortunately, an oral appliance worn in the mouth while asleep offers an effective, and often more comfortable, treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). One type of oral appliance, the mandibular advancement device, positions the lower jaw slightly forward, helping keep the sleeper’s airway open and reducing the risk of interrupted breathing. The device has proven successful in treating OSA, but it must be worn regularly. Getting into the habit of using the appliance can be an adjustment, and maintaining motivation to follow through with regular use is crucial.

Think Bigger & Beyond

Whole You™ is looking for new ways to encourage sleep apnea patients with oral devices to maintain greater compliance. Can using an oral appliance be fun? Can on-line communities or gamification make use even more rewarding? We are interested in all ideas that will help a patient commit more fully to treatment. Re-imagination is the watchword for this challenge. We are hoping that ideas submitted will push beyond traditional monitors to include anything from user-friendly apps to reward-based gamification to wherever your imagination leads you.

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

The more you experience, the more you enjoy life. Health issues can arise, but you should still be free to squeeze all the joy, excitement, and wonder out of life you can. Whole You™ products and solutions are made to enhance how you experience life. We push the boundaries of senses and mobility, helping you to see more, hear more, taste more, feel more, do more–unlocking new and exciting possibilities for your health and well-being.

Whole You™–our goal is to help you live life to the fullest.

Focus on Vision

Vision is one of our most important senses. And yet despite the essential role it plays in our enjoyment of life, many people do not schedule routine eye exams. An eye exam provides a crucial opportunity for an eye care professional to identify vision issues as well as detect general health concerns. While it is often said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, our eyes are also windows into our overall health and well-being.

Taking Better Care of Your Eyes

Whole You™ would like to help patients and eye care professionals take better care of eyes and vision. We are looking for ideas to achieve this important goal. Specifically, what other vision services could eye care providers offer to encourage more frequent eye health interactions?

Possibilities for the next big ideas are endless: Vision exercise and training? Eyestrain treatments? Eye cleaning? Enhanced vision consultation for athletes, drivers, pilots, computer programmers, and other individuals for whom vision is a critical concern? Ultimately, we are searching for ideas that will help individuals recognize that enhanced eye and vision care can lead to better health and well-being.

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

Bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) can offer advantages over conventional monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) because they have the potential to modulate two specific pharmacologies simultaneously. This can lead to greater efficacy than is achieved by either single mAbs or even mAb combination therapy.

GSK has a strong interest in this emerging area of biopharmaceuticals, and has made and assessed many experimental BsAbs, as well as progressed a lead BsAb molecule to an experimental clinical study. For certain BsAb target pairings we have also seen early promise of differentiation from standard mAb combination approaches.

Whilst the best recognised medical application of BsAb use is in driving T-cell activation, GSK is also interested in ‘direct’ antibody actions, such as the inhibition or activation of conventional ligand/receptor target pairs.

GSK are therefore keen to work with the wider R&D community to understand if there are methods by which we can (i) predict the ability of any given target pair to act synergistically, and within this space (ii) predict target combinations that might be uniquely suitable to modulation by a BsAb, and therefore create medicines with the potential to be more efficacious than the equivalent mAb combination therapy.

This is an electronic Request-for-Partners (eRFP) Challenge; the Solver will only need to submit a written proposal to be evaluated by the Seeker with a goal of establishing a GSK funded collaborative partnership.

Many biological experiments are performed under the assumption that all cells of a particular “type” are identical. However, recent data suggest that individual cells within a single population may differ quite significantly and these differences can drive the health and function of the entire cell population. Single cell analysis comprises a broad field that covers advanced optical, electrochemical, mass spectrometry instrumentation, and sensor technology, as well as separation and sequencing techniques. Although the approaches currently in use can offer snapshots of single cells, the methods are often not amenable to longitudinal studies that monitor changes in individual cells in situ.

The NIH Single Cell Analysis Program (SCAP) is searching for novel methods for analyzing dynamic states of individual cells that can serve as the basis for predicting alterations in cell behavior and function over time. The ultimate goal is to develop new tools and methods that allow time-dependent measurements at the single cell level in a complex tissue environment to assess functional changes, provide information on the health status of a given cell, and help guide diagnosis and therapeutic treatments related to human disease states. Technological breakthroughs in this arena could allow researchers and physicians to identify rare cells in a mixed population such as individual cells that can transform and become cancerous; cells that are latently infected with a pathogenic virus; or cells that develop resistance to drugs over time. This challenge is structured in 2 phases: Phase 1 is a Theoretical Challenge and Phase 2, a Reduction to Practice Challenge. Phase 1 may award up to 6 prizes from a total prize award pool of $100,000 for the theoretical portion of the competition.

In addition to the direct monetary awards, the prize winners and selected runners-up will be recognized by the NIH Common Fund Single Cell Analysis Program and invited to attend The 3rd Annual Single Cell Analysis Investigators Meeting in Rockville, Maryland, USA on April 20, 2015. In addition to the public announcement, this opportunity may include paid travel and accommodations to the event and potential participation as an invited speaker at the discretion of the NIH.

Prize winners and selected runners-up with a qualifying score in Phase 1 will be invited to participate in Phase 2, which is a Reduction to Practice challenge to provide proof of concept data related to their Phase 1 entries. Phase 2 may award up to 2 winning solutions from a total pool of $400,000.

Phase 1 (Theoretical) Challenge requires only a written proposal.

Phase 2 (Reduction to Practice) Challenge will require documentation of Phase 1 implementation including the submission of data.

Hot water heating systems have a couple of different models in residential building with multiple units. Laws demanding the separation of thermal energy costs for each individual unit make it very difficult to measure and comply with certain distribution systems. A new solution is desired to measure the thermal energy consumed of residential units with specific distribution systems. Details are given inside the Challenge.

Investors are flooded every day by thousands of news items from many different sources – blogs, feeds, internal reports, news services – yet only a small number of those items may be of interest to a particular investor. Filtering these news items for companies or organizations of interest is becoming increasingly important as the number and variety of sources expands, yet it is becoming more difficult because many of these news items are not explicitly tagged with the relevant companies or organizations. The Seeker, Thomson Reuters, is searching for an algorithm to accurately tag incoming news items by relevance for companies or organizations mentioned within the news item.

This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and delivery of source code implementing an algorithm that solves the problem. Additionally, as a Prodigy Challenge a real-time online scoring utility and leaderboard will be available to track Solver algorithm performance.

This Challenge has a special award structure with awards of $20,000, $10,000, and $5,000 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, respectively for granting the Seeker a non-exclusive license to practice the solutions. In addition, the Seeker may, at its sole discretion, award an additional $20,000 (“Additional Award”) to one or more of the submissions awarded a Licensing Award to obtain ownership of the solution. Awards will be based on Seeker’s determination of solution performance using a reserved independent validation set.

When large numbers of people are displaced due to natural or man-made disasters, they flee their homes and settle in formal or informal camps. One major problem is the management of solid wastes (trash, rubbish, garbage, litter) produced by large numbers of people in a relatively small area. Improper management of solid wastes leads to many issues, mostly centered on degrading the health of the people involved. We are searching for the most economical process of managing solid wastes without worsening the already poor living conditions in these areas or causing harm to individuals or the environment.

How can we test the mechanical properties of a bond between 2 structures without breaking or damaging the bond or the substrate materials? This challenge is looking for non-destructive testing methods or technologies that will enable accurate prediction of the strength of an adhesive bond between heterogenous materials.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – a common saying that is particularly true when it comes to peoples’ long-term health. The Seeker for this Challenge, UnitedHealthcare, seeks to promote healthier lifestyles and/or new approaches for managing widespread chronic conditions by taking advantage of two exciting dynamics in today’s marketplace – innovative consumer technologies and consumer-centric health solutions. Accordingly, they are seeking prototypes of novel combinations or modifications (“mods”) of existing, off-the-shelf consumer technology (including computer software and smartphone applications) that could be used to improve peoples’ health and quality of life.

This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires a written proposal and experimental proof-of-concept data (and/or prototype delivery). In the absence of a proven solution, however, the Seeker may make a partial award of up to $20,000 USD for a purely theoretical contribution. In addition to the Challenge award, the Seeker may be interested in further collaboration with winning Solver(s) to further advance this project.

This Challenge seeks novel prototypes for a simple reusable timer based on the principles of reverse fluid flow and color change.

This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires both a written proposal and experimental proof-of-concept evidence. Solvers may submit 1-page abstracts describing their proposed solution by 14-Jan-2013 to receive brief feedback from the Seeker before committing to experimental work.